The city of Bonney Lake is considering a stimulus package of its own to spur building.

The city is in the midst of studying its impact fees and charges and devising ways to ease the burden they place on developers, including deferring their payment and potentially reducing the rates themselves for a short time.

“All we are doing is raising the question ‘Should we reduce the rates on a temporary basis?’” City Administrator Don Morrison said.

While permits are up this year in Bonney Lake, Morrison said they are still nowhere near where they were before the economy took a nose dive in 2007.

“2010 is better than 2009, but it’s still only one-quarter of what used to be,” Morrison said.

In the city of Bonney Lake, the total cost of fees and charges comes to between $27,000 and $30,000 per single family residential home, depending on the size of the house.

Included in those charges are traffic impact fees of $4,035, park impact fees of $2,985, and water development charge of $7,946 and a sewer development charge of $8,945.

Morrison said Bonney Lake’s fees are based on a “fairly extensive study” of the costs of adding the new growth to the city and are “fairly defensible” because of it, but the city is trying to increase building and therefore looking at all possibilities.

So far, no ordinance has been drafted and the council is just beginning to look into the matter.

“I think impact fees have a purpose, but they have to be reviewed and discussed,” Mayor Neil Johnson said Friday.

But Johnson said the impact fees and development charges are in line with the city’s philosophy of charging new development for improvements.

“If you don’t have these then what mechanism do you have to make sure growth pays for growth,” he said, adding that he views the fees as “investing in the future.”

Johnson said he was not necessarily a fan of “arbitrarily” reducing the fees, but would like to see incentives to spur building, such as potentially moving the time when they are collected from when permits are taken to when a certificate of occupancy is granted, so developers are not forced to put up the money up front.

Johnson and Morrison, however, both said they were skeptical the incentives would make a big difference because other stimulus and incentive programs in the city – such as a sales tax deferment – have not necessarily worked so far.

“We’ve had very few takers on these,” Johnson said.

Deputy Mayor Dan Swatman, a big proponent of impact fees over the past decade, said he is not in favor of dropping or reducing the fees, but is open to discussion about when they are collected, calling it a “sticky wicket” because of many factors that could prevent the city from actually collecting the money.

Swatman also said there are people building today, but he would support a program to try and spur more.

“Any break we can give them to make it more cost effective for them is a good idea,” he said.

Developer Larry Igraham, managing partner of Emerald Properties, said Bonney Lake’s high impact fees – especially traffic, which is meted out on a per trip basis – can cause builders to look elsewhere, where fees are less or nonexistent.

Ingraham cited the new WinCo in Sumner as an example. Because Sumner’s per-trip impact fee is less than half that of Bonney Lake’s, Ingraham estimated the company saved itself $1.5 million in locating in Sumner instead of Bonney Lake.

Ingraham said it would be best to reduce or eliminate the fees, but also said moving the fee collection to the end of construction could help because of the difficulty in getting construction loans.

“In this environment, money is excruciatingly difficult to come by for construction,” he said.

Ingraham said the current state of the economy is among the worst he has seen in 40 years in the business and builders – as well as tenants – are having trouble moving forward with new projects.

“We are in extremely dire times and it impacts an awful lot of people and the city has the opportunity to do something that’s going to benefit their businesses, it’s going to benefit their citizens,” Ingraham said.

“This is an opportunity for leadership, to improve their competitive advantage,” he said.

Bonney Lake City Council members were scheduled to address the issue at their Tuesday night workshop.